The Pirate Bay is back online. Its new provider turned out to be none less than one in North Korea.

This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.

People using The Pirate Bay right now will observe that it’s slightly slower than usual.Earlier today, the Norwegian Pirate Party sent a press release that they no longer supplied bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, as the party’s uplink had caved to threats from the copyright industry about kicking out The Pirate Bay. (This remains a concern in itself.)

Ten minutes after that article was posted, The Pirate Bay came back online with a new provider that was as-yet unidentified. The swarm has worked and discovered the origins of the new provider: North Korea.This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 3 MARCH 102, 평양 (PYONGYANG).The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country's changing view of access to information. It's a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it's also ones duty to grab their hand.

North Korea, huh? Good luck to ANY legal organization, US based or other wise, trying to shut it down NOW... Seriously, they might as well just give up now. NK wants nothing to do with anyone associated with "The west"... And pretty much all of our allies, essentially anyone who cares about international law, piracy or otherwise, are considered "the west".... :-p

Now, that would just prove their point, wouldn't it?By the way, who's they?

There's no point. Or the point is fake. TPB is both a symbol and means of "free stuff". While I firmly believe that neither the owners nor operators can be held responsible, most content indexed and searchable by TPB is illegal. On one side we have dreaming idealists, who happen to do both good and bad, on the other - rotten copyright Nazis who think that by destroying Leningrad (the symbol) they'll destroy the Red Army (public file-sharing). Neither is a sane choice to put your money on.

As for "they" - the copyright Nazis, the west. North Korea relies on Thailand company to keep their internets running. That's a single weak link. Just like Cambodia decided to rat out Warg in exchange for sh*tload of economic aid, I figure Thailand will soon be required to find pressure points to push on the company they harbor, private or no.

Just as in Mega case - one who has money and power, will win. It occured that Dotcom also had quite a lot of money and some power, but not nearly enough - he'll not hold in his choke point for long, of that I'm sure.

There's no point. Or the point is fake. TPB is both a symbol and means of "free stuff". While I firmly believe that neither the owners nor operators can be held responsible, most content indexed and searchable by TPB is illegal. On one side we have dreaming idealists, who happen to do both good and bad, on the other - rotten copyright Nazis who think that by destroying Leningrad (the symbol) they'll destroy the Red Army (public file-sharing). Neither is a sane choice to put your money on.

As for "they" - the copyright Nazis, the west. North Korea relies on Thailand company to keep their internets running. That's a single weak link. Just like Cambodia decided to rat out Warg in exchange for sh*tload of economic aid, I figure Thailand will soon be required to find pressure points to push on the company they harbor, private or no.

Just as in Mega case - one who has money and power, will win. It occured that Dotcom also had quite a lot of money and some power, but not nearly enough - he'll not hold in his choke point for long, of that I'm sure.

How is the TPB operators not responsible. they know "everything" there is illegal, they openly create categories for it to make it easily searchable, they index it, they have validated uploaders who are validated for their quality illegal uploaders. They openly not only ignore takedown notices, they laugh and make fun of them like tween boys.

They are most definitely responsible. and no, TPB is NOT like the post office or the highways. it's like the pimp who cleverly deals his drugs and whos by proxy by giving the customer a key to a dropbox instead of handing the goods directly.

I'm not any good in politics and diplomacy, nor do I like to put a lot of thought in my writing. Well... ok - cutting off is a no-no. Stepping on Star JV Ltd.? Aren't they doing it all the time thus far?

As for being responsible. I'm sure the law does define such involvement as grounds for charges. But I don't support that Nazi law when applied to this case. I'm not a realist, either. Won't get a deal of a healthy discussion from me. Sorry.